Summary
We will always do our best to fulfill your needs and meet your goals, but sometimes it’s best to have a few things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and what happens if stuff goes wrong.
In this contract, you won’t find complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We have no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. We do want what’s best for the safety of both parties, now and in the future.
In short
You (The Client) are hiring us (Creative Clarity) to design and develop a website for the price set out in our quote. Of course, it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that.
What Do Both Parties Agree To Do?
As our customer, you have the power and ability to enter into this contract on behalf of your company or organisation.
You agree to provide us with everything that we’ll need to complete the project – including text, images, and other information – as and when we need it and in the format, we ask for. You agree to review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways and you’ll also be bound by any dates that we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this contract.
We have the experience and ability to perform the services you need from us and we will carry them out in a professional and timely manner. Along the way, we will endeavor to meet all the deadlines set but we can’t be responsible for a missed launch date or a deadline if you have been late in supplying materials or have not approved or signed off our work on-time at any stage. On top of this, we’ll also maintain the confidentiality of any information that you give us.
Getting Down to the Nitty Gritty
Design
If we are designing your application we’ll create designs for the look-and-feel, layout, and functionality of your website. We’ll design your home page first and, once you’re happy with it, the rest of the website will follow the same look. Most websites take about two rounds of changes, but we’re flexible. If you’re not happy with the designs at this stage, you will pay us in full for all of the work that we have produced until that point and you may either cancel this contract or continue to commission us to make further design revisions at our standard design rates.
AI Tools
We use AI tools to help us write code, draft copy and sometimes create design elements. We check and finish everything ourselves before it reaches you. We don’t put your passwords or your customers’ personal information into AI tools, and our AI tools are set so that our work isn’t used to train them.
Browsers and Devices
We will test your website on current versions of all major browsers, on desktop, tablet and phone. Older browsers will still show your website, but it may not look exactly the same. If you need us to support an older browser, we’ll quote you for that work first.
Text Content
We may have written a hundred blog posts but we’re not responsible for writing or inputting any text copy unless we specified it in our original quote. We’ll be happy to help though, and in addition to the quote, we will charge you at our standard copywriting or content input rate.
Photographs
You will supply us photographs in digital format.
If you choose to buy stock photographs we can suggest vendors of stock photography. Any time we spend searching for appropriate photographs will be charged at our standard discovery rate.
Changes and Revisions
The price in our quote covers everything set out in it, and it won’t change unless you ask us for something more. We don’t want to limit either your options or your opportunities to change your mind.
The price and timeframe in our quote are based on the amount of work we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything that you have told us you want to achieve.
If you do want to change your mind, add extra pages or templates or even add new functionality, that won’t be a problem. However, you will be charged accordingly and these additional costs will need to be agreed to before the extra work commences. This additional work will affect deadlines and they will be moved accordingly. We’ll be upfront about all of this if and when it happens to make sure we’re all on the same page before proceeding. We may also ask you to put requests in writing so we can keep track of changes. If the nature or functions of the project change significantly throughout the process, we reserve the right to deem the current project cancelled.
At this point, you will pay us in full for all the work we have done and may commission us to complete the new project based on the new requirements. This will require a new quote and contract.
Technical Support
For the first 30 days after your website goes live, if anything isn’t working right, we’ll fix it free of charge. New features and changes aren’t part of this and are quoted separately.
You may already have professional website hosting, you might even manage that hosting in-house; if that’s the case, great. If you don’t manage your own website hosting, or your current hosting environment does not support the solution we are providing, we can set up an account for you at one of our preferred, third-party hosting providers. We will charge you a one-off fee for installing your site on this server, plus any statistics software such as Google Analytics, then the updates to, and management of that server, plus any support issues will be up to you. If you have signed up to our Website Care Plan your hosting and support is covered with Creative Clarity.
Legal stuff
We can’t guarantee that the functions contained in any web page templates or in a completed website will always be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages arising out of the operation of or inability to operate this website and any other web pages, even if you have advised us of the possibilities of such damages.
If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions. Phew!
Copyrights
You guarantee to us that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork that you provide us for inclusion in the website are either owned by your good-selves, or that you have permission to use them.
When we receive your final payment, copyright is automatically assigned as follows:
You own the graphics and other visual elements that we create for you for this project.
If an image or other element is mostly made by an AI tool, Australian law may not give it any copyright. We’ll tell you when something is AI-made. You’re free to use it, but we can’t promise you own it exclusively or that no one else has something similar.
We’ll give you a copy of all files and you should store them really safely as we are not required to keep them or provide any native source files we used to make them.
You also own text content, photographs and other data you provided unless someone else owns them. We own the markup, CSS and other code and we license it to you for use on only this project. We love to show off our work and share what we have learned with other people, so we reserve the right to display and link to your completed project as part of our portfolio and to write about the project on websites, in magazine articles and in books about web design.
Payments
We are sure you understand how important it is for a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick tight to the following payment schedule.
- 30% when you agree to our quote, so we can get started
- The remaining 70% once the website has been tested and everyone agrees it is ready to go live.
NB: If you are unable to supply all of the right content at this stage, it does not mean we have not done our job. Once the site has been tested and is ready to go live, either with your content or placeholder images and dummy text, we will issue the final invoice. Once the final invoice is paid we will hand over the keys and show you how to put your own content in once it’s ready. If the final invoice is not paid within the credit terms we have given you, we are under no obligation to keep the site on our testing server or continue with the project in any way.
But where’s all the horrible small print?
Just like a parking ticket, you can’t transfer this contract to anyone else without our permission. This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place. Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of NSW, Australia.